


The New Mutants Watch 'The New Mutants'

by NotQuiteHydePark



Category: New Mutants (Comics), The New Mutants (2020), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Comics/Movie Crossover, Criticism, F/F, First Time, Humor, Meta, Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:20:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27951425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteHydePark/pseuds/NotQuiteHydePark
Summary: “But—but—” Kate hasn’t been this surprised since she banged up her nose walking into a Krakoan door. “But movie you is such a jerk!”
Relationships: Danielle Moonstar/Rahne Sinclair, Douglas Ramsey/Warlock (New Mutants), Kitty Pryde/Illyana Rasputin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	The New Mutants Watch 'The New Mutants'

“Och, that wasnae Roberto at all. Nae even close.” Rahne’s a bit salty about that part. More than a bit. 

The hangout room/ TV room in Alpha House is full of pillows and overstuffed couches, just like the old mansion’s room, and Rahne’s wrapped herself around one of them, her head against Dani’s knee, one hand on Dani’s thigh, with Dani’s hand over it. 

The other New Mutants, with Kate, sit in the beanbag chairs that serve, in Alpha House in the Akademos Sextant, as chairs and tables and writing desks all at once. The great thick flat leaves on the beanbags make them look like perching birds, which means that the classic question -How is a raven like a writing desk?- has a Krakoan answer.

“I know,” says Kate. The credits roll; so do her eyes. As always, Kate feels ethically required to let the credits (but not her eyes) roll on towards the end, even if she’s not paying attention. She’s never shut off a movie early in her life. And she’s only walked out of one (not this one).

“That guy looks more like me than he does like Roberto,” Amara agrees. “And frankly he acts more like me too. These aren’t my friends.” She struts out the front door of Alpha House into the brisk Krakoan evening.

“Good thing Roberto’s in space and will never see the movie,” Dani adds. “Nor Sam. Let’s just not tell them. And I see what Amara means, but I have mixed feelings. What do we think about the rest of the movie? Anyone know if there’s a stinger?”

“What, a bad guy based on creepy-crawly exoskeletal beasties?” Rahne scratches her rusty-red head: she thinks she should know what a stinger is, along with a lot of pop culture things, by now, but she just can’t. Even well out of her teens, she still gets embarrassed that way. And it doesn’t help that she’s just seen a teen version of herself. Or someone somewhat like it.

“Sorry,” says Dani, considerate as always. “A stinger is an extra scene at the end of a movie, after the credits. Usually it’s either a comedic bit, or a bit of setup for the sequel.”

“There’s gonna be a sequel to that ane?” Rahne asks. 

“Almost certainly they won’t make a sequel with this cast or story.” Dani stops. “Just as well: I don’t think anybody ought to revisit the demon bear. There’s only ever been one bear inside me, except for the aspirin I take for Valkyrie headaches.” Only Kate gets the labored pun. “Rahne, do you want there to be a sequel?”

“Aye, if they re-cast Berto, I surely do,” Rahne says. “I want to know what happens to those kids once they escape that…. institution.” Dani nods. “Down that road…”

Rahne trails off. She’s happier on Krakoa than she’s ever been, by far, but even by those higher standards, Dani has rarely seen her so dreamy about a piece of supposedly fictional media. One girl’s trash is another girl’s treasure. She wonders if Rahne will cut her hair ever shorter, like the actor in the movie did.

Northstar zips in with a stack of packages for the New Mutants, looks at the screen, says “That movie? Way too slow for me,” and then zips out in a blend of pride and contempt. Dani rises to close the screen door he left open, letting the Krakoan night air in.

Kate watches Dani, then nods at Rahne, encouraging the Scottish wolf-girl to go on. “I know, it hurt to watch an’ all that, with all the self-harm. Self-harm is aye hard to depict without doin’ more harm. But all the memories felt sae real to me, even thoo it never happened that way. Wi’ the clock, an’ the grounds ye canna leave, an’ the scheming science lady, that fake Dr. Reyes, nothin’ like oor good Cecilia. Only…. Dani, when was the first time you and I… you know… together?”

“After Asgard, for sure,” Dani says. “After I found Brightwind.”

“And after I… you helped me understand.”

“Your wolf-prince. I know. You could love him and still be with me. That took—”

“All nicht, I noo.”

“And a lot of cups of cocoa,” Kate adds. “Illyana and I were wondering whether you two would ever figure it out.”

Dani scritch-scratches the fuzz at the base of Rahne’s short red hair. “Aye, the best are the moments when Dani and I—I mean, the movie actors who play airselves—learn they might be in love. The way that I save her life, and then a’ the slow burn. I love the hale idea that we might have gone there so soon, that I could have been there for you so airlie, Dani. We could have…”

Dani—very slowly—interrupts. “What did you think of the rest of the movie, though?”

“What rest of the movie?” Rahne thinks she’s making a joke, then realizes she’s not quite making a joke. “I mean, I noo many other things take place, besides the quiet parts where we kiss an’ I save you—”

“Not that many other things,” adds Illyana, shrugging, still Russian-accented after all these years. Kate reaches over very carefully to brush Illyana’s bangs out of her eyes. Did Illyana on Earth-616 re-grow them because she knew there’d be a movie about her and her friends on Earth-1218? If so, do her bangs reflect humor, or homage, or spite?

“The accents though. They could have done better on that front. “ It’s as if Doug read her mind. (No mind-readers were involved in the making of that movie. Nor any actual mutants.) 

“Ye’re gonna judge the movie on the way the accents sound?” Rahne’s almost incredulous. “Dougie, that’s like the bootmaker who grades all the movies on how well the shoe soles fit. How would ye feel if ye got to kiss ‘Lock onscreen? and ye could watch it with them, holding hands? I thought it was sweet.” Dani nods; their fingers lace more tightly.

“Selffriends need not rely on speculation-hearsay-conjecture!” sputters the technarch, extruding an old-style, boxy TV from their shoulders. The tube lights up, first with gray snow, and then with a high-definition image of a very blond Doug Ramsey planting a smooch on Warlock’s rectangular, circuit-board-style lips. The technarch’s hair pops up like so many springs; his left eye pops like a flashbulb.

Doug blushes and smiles. “’Lock, did you… like the movie we actually saw?”

“Self was scared fictional selffriends would never escape. Self understands fictionfilms belong to categories designed to tell viewerhumans what to expect. But self is confused. Selffriends, moviegenre was superhero-action-documentary? or teen romance? or horror?”

“Romance,” says Rahne, leaning back into one of those giant green beanbags.

“Documentary, but they got a whole bunch of things wrong,” says Dani. “At least they tried.”

“Horror,” says Illyana, smiling. “And I do like the Alice books.” She pours just a trickle of vodka from a tiny flask into her glass of iced tea.

“You liked the movie?” Kate’s seated in her beat-up wingback chair (Gambit’s cats got to it); if she weren’t sitting down, she might back up. “But Illyana—this version of you says things the real Illyana would never say! Like, racist garbage! To our friend Dani!” 

Kate and Illyana had snuggled close themselves when they saw “Dani” and “Rahne’s” first kiss, but Kate’s almost ashamed she liked it; the language left a bad taste, and a slightly familiar taste, in Kate’s guilty mouth.

“I loved it,” Illyana shrugs. “Maybe my standards are too low. I’m not exactly a—how do you say it?—cinephile. But it’s a movie about surviving and fighting back and defending your friends however you can. And armor. And swords. I don’t know how the movie people on that Earth learned about the Soulsword, but they didn’t get it wrong. And I got to see myself save the day.”

“But—but—” Kate hasn’t been this surprised since she banged up her nose walking into a Krakoan door. “But movie you is such a jerk!”

“Sometimes I am a jerk.” Illyana shrugs knowingly and starts to lace up her black sneakers: it’s almost time for her midnight run through the Krakoan Moss Forest.

First, though, she’s going to defend that neat, violent movie, where someone in the special effects department figured out exactly how her soulsword, and her Darkchilde armor, and her buns, work. Where the violence made sense. Where the world was a prison designed to make kids into weapons, and nothing could grow until the kids learned to fight back.

Kate, however, isn’t having it. “You’re not a jerk like that,” Kate says to Illyana. “You were down on yourself a lot when you came back from Limbo, but never so down on your friends.”

“That’s because I had friends,” Illyana says. Warlock nods. “The real me came back from Limbo to find the real you, and you were my age, and you loved me. And Piotr was there, and he still loved me. And Storm was there, and she was alive. And Kurt. I may have thought I was a devil—sometimes I still do—but I knew an adult who looked the part and everybody around him knew he wasn’t. I had a home. The movie Illyana…”

She stops and balls up one strong fist—it’s like she held the pommel of a dagger, Kate thinks-- and then Illyana starts again. “The movie Illyana had no one. Unless you count movie Sam, who doesn’t really like her, and movie Rahne, who’s scared half to death of her, and she’s never met an adult she can trust. It’s abusers and institutions all the way down. No wonder she pretends she hates everyone and she likes to hit things. I mean, I, also, like to hit things, but they’re the right things. Even when I’m the wrong one to hit them.”

Illyana takes a breath. “Movie Illyana’s in much worse shape than I ever was, once I got out of Limbo. She’s—” 

“Och,” says Rahne. “She’s more like our Laura. Suspicious and hostile for years at a time, and for guid reason given where she’s been.”

Kate and Illyana both nod. “You always had me,” Kate says.

“I always had you,” Illyana says. “Backpack.”

“Thirsty sword lesbian.”

“Disaster bisexual.”

“Hey, I’m the Red Queen now. Show some respect.”

Illyana throws a pillow at her girlfriend.

**Author's Note:**

> If there's any insight into the actual movie in here I want to thank the Person who Showed Me the Movie, who may or may not wish to be named here.


End file.
